By now Ranklin was feeling thoroughly uneasy, and it was a relief when Dagner brought the conversation smoothly down to matters of fact. “I believe you know Italy well, Sir Caspar.”
“Knew it, knew it . . . Always been a good place for the English to go to seed. I suppose I shouldn’t ask if you’ve got a ploy going on there?”
“Do you feel we should have anything going on there?” Dagner turned the question deftly.
“Hm. You won’t find much competition from our embassy, not under Rennell Rodd.” He chuckled, then frowned. “But looking for secrets of Italian policy is looking for a haystack under a needle. In my day there was a policy on every cafe table and a couple of secrets underneath it and I doubt much has changed. Bismarck said it all, thirty years ago: ‘Italy has a large appetite and very poor teeth’.”
“Something I learned only last night,” Dagner said casually, “and that rather surprised me. It probably shouldn’t have done, but most of my soldiering’s been done a thousand miles from the sea . . . That the Navy’s pretty well pulled out of the Mediterranean.”
This surprised Ranklin, too, but Sir Caspar just nodded. “Ah yes, that. You’re thinking of the route to Suez.”
“And India beyond.”
“Of course. And you aren’t the only one who’s concerned about us passing that responsibility to the French.”
Still befogged, Ranklin remembered that the only stupid question is the one you’re ashamed to ask. “Was this something official, sir? – and when?”
“Not officially announced, good Lord no. But it happened about a year ago. One fine day the Royal Navy virtually vanished from the Med, and the French fleet vanished from the Channel and the Atlantic. The Kaiser didn’t need any informers to tell him a deal had been struck on who guarded what for the other.”
Ranklin nodded. A year ago, he hadn’t been in this business, and his own problems were blotting out any interest in naval doings anyway.
Alerion went on: “The thinking goes that now Russia’s our ally, she’s no threat to India so there’ll be no need for quick reinforcement out there. Meanwhile, von Tirpitz is certainly building a damn great fleet on our own doorstep and that has to be the Navy’s greatest concern.”
Dagner said thoughtfully: “But it does seem to mean that the Italian and Austrian navies, if they combined, would control the eastern end of the Med. And the route to Suez.”
“Technically, Italy’s already allied with both Austria and Germany in the Triple Alliance, but I doubt that means much. Italy’s bound to join in a major war, out of sheer pride at becoming a new European Power – but who’s going to pay the bill? That’s Giolitti’s problem; he’s been their Prime Minister, on and off, for twenty years and it looks as if he’ll get back at the November elections. And he’s a rogue but no fool, and knows his best policy is to wait and see who’ll pay Italy the biggest bribe to take sides. And his worst fear is his own fanatics pushing him into a war with France or Austria – or even us – out of nationalist pride and without bribes.”
“But meanwhile,” Dagner reminded him, “the route to India . . .”
“I think we’re realising that we can’t be powerful everywhere. We have to leave some things to diplomacy – and your Bureau, of course,” Alerion added politely.
11
While Dagner escorted Sir Caspar out, Ranklin checked the room over for any papers that might have got left behind, and called down by voicepipe for someone to clear away the coffee tray. Then went upstairs.
Dagner was back at the littered work-table; he looked up with a thin smile. “What did you make of Sir Caspar?”
“Can’t say I followed everything he said,” Ranklin said tactfully. “But most seemed to be sound, if cynical, sense.”
“Quite. And he confirmed what I heard last night about the naval situation in the Med. Perhaps you gathered that it was a sort of reunion of old India hands? – we even got Lord Curzon to drop in . . .” Of course: Curzon had been Viceroy of India when Dagner had won his DSO, had probably pinned it on him. It must have been Curzon’s Rolls-Royce Ranklin had seen at the Tower last night. “They were quite cut up about it all.”
“Understandably,” Ranklin felt he should say.
“And it ties up with something Senator Falcone was telling me yesterday afternoon.” He pulled out his watch. “Would you care to hear about it over lunch downstairs?”
“Of course.” Ranklin hadn’t been sure he was going to hear what the Senator had said – nor that he really wanted to. The less he was involved in office strategies, apart from the training programme, the more free he’d be to get abroad again. Hiding O’Gilroy away down at Brooklands could only be a temporary measure.
The tables in the dark-panelled restaurant on the ground floor were widely spaced, and the lunchtime crowd had thinned out, so they were safe from being overheard. Even so, Dagner switched to Indian reminiscences whenever a waiter came near.
“How au fait are you with naval matters?” he began.
“A pure landlubber,” Ranklin said promptly. “As I say, we don’t usually touch on such things.”
“It all seems to begin seven years ago when we launched HMS Dreadnought, which made every other battleship in the world – our own included – out of date. Since then, everybody’s been building their own versions.” He shot his cuff and consulted some figures he’d pencilled on it. “We’ve now got eighteen, plus eight battle-cruisers which are faster but thinner-skinned. And of those, according to Whitaker’s – something anybody can look up – only three are in the Mediterranean. And the French, who are supposed to be guarding the Med, have only two dreadnoughts anywhere. Against that, the Italians already have four and the Austrians two and are building two more. So, on paper, we and the French are already outnumbered down there and it could soon be worse. Why are we happy with that? – I thought the Navy was there to protect our Empire and trade.”
Ranklin hadn’t seen Dagner so positive, almost aggressive, before. He just had time to murmur: “The German fleet in the North Sea . . .” before their soup arrived.
When they were alone again, Dagner said: “Quite. But the matter might be a little more urgent that most people suppose . . . Because what Senator Falcone came to tell our Foreign Office people was that, three months ago, the Italian Foreign Minister signed a secret treaty with Austria putting the Italian fleet under Austrian command in the event of a war. So we would be facing a unified fleet.”
Dagner’s quiet tone seemed aimed at understating this news and, by implication, emphasising it. So Ranklin put down his soup spoon and frowned. Then asked: “Has he any proof of this treaty?”
“That’s what the Foreign Office asked him – not too tactfully, I understand. No, he hasn’t. But he hopes to get a copy of the treaty before too long. Or so he says. So the FO suggested he come back when he’d got that. He then – mistakenly, I think – offered them a deal.”
Ranklin winced, imagining the sudden Ice Age that would have visited King Charles Street. One did not offer the British Foreign Office deals.
“Exactly,” Dagner smiled. “That’s why he turned to us.”
“He’d turned to us before he saw the FO. Though perhaps he guessed what sort of reception he’d get there.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s very much an Italian nationalist who hates the idea of subservience to Austria. I find that reassuring, that one can understand his motives.” He saw Ranklin’s dubious look and smiled. “No, Captain, I’m not making the mistake of thinking because we agree with the Senator on one thing, he must be really just an Englishman with a funny accent. I’m sure that, quite apart from his nationalism, his own political ambitions are mixed up in this. We’ll have to watch out for that-Did you ever hear about Hodson, the chap who actually set up Hodson’s Horse?” That was for the waiter taking away their soup plates. And he did it so quickly that Ranklin never got to hear about Hodson.